Andy's Blog

Off to Chicago

I'm doing the Internet-from-SFO thing again, as I prepare to head out to Chicago for the long 4th-of-July weekend. Aside from having a cookout with the family on the 4th, and seeing the new Superman movie, and also hitting a museum, I don't really have anything else planned.

But, it should be a nice break from the drudgery of California living. :)

-Andy.

Barcamp: Wrap-up

I have been busy this week with work and such, and haven't had a chance to sit down and writeup a postscript for last weekend's Barcamp. Thankfully, Justin has prodded me through e-mail, so here it is. Justin writes:

"Any final thoughts on BarCamp? Were there things that you thought they did particularly well? Anything they should have done better?"

And here is my response:

I probably should blog about this, but I think that BarCamp might have been a little over-hyped in my mind. I expected to be fully blown-away by all of the smart people talking about really smart things. Instead, there were a few sessions that were like that, and bunch that were just "ok".

Things that they did well - for being an event that is supposed to be barely-contained anarchy, things were planned really well, there was tons of food (which was all very good), and there wasn't really a time where I didn't know what to do. It also seems like they were pretty good about casting the sessions on the 'net (with video, irc, etc.).

Things that weren't as good -- I don't think that we (the participants, myself included) did a good enough job capturing things in the wiki.

All-in-all, it was a weekend well spent, and I would like to go again. I'm pretty happy that so many people volunteered to pull-off Barcamp, because it really was great. I think that if I do go again, I need to work harder on doing a session of my own. By the time I finally decided what I would like to talk about, it was too late. I think it is true that you get out of Barcamp what you put into it, and I was a bit timid this time, and need to put more into it next time.

Justin is also aiming for me to head up to Seattle for Mind Camp, which is also a possibility.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp

Barcamp: "Getting Real" in the real world

I went to an interesting session that was basically a discussion of 37signals' PDF book, "Getting Real", and how people are adopting it at their companies. What was interesting to me is that the methodology described in "Getting Real" really does seem to work, especially at smaller, more close-knit companies.

One of the central questions is will this scale, to much larger companies? I related my own experience at EDS (a 117,000 person company -- the next largest company of those that were in the session was 60 people). In my view, there is a pretty real chance at getting my immediate team to adopt some of the principals contained in "Getting Real". My concern, however, is how do teams that are following the agile/getting real approach interact with teams following more "traditional" approaches. This matters, because our team is increasing its interactions with other teams within EDS, and I think this is starting to bring us down to a lowest-common denominator.

The great insight about "Getting Real" that I gleaned, however, was this quote: "the magic of getting real is agile development for the rest of the company (not just the developers)". So, I can definitely see how sending this around to the non-development layers of EDS could really help.

The book seems to be really focused on companies producing web applications, however, which I wish we had addressed in our session. But I still got a lot of food for thought, in my efforts to transform EDS into a more social company.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp, EDS, 37signals, Getting Real

Barcamp: Macromedia (Adobe) Flex & being a Mac snob

Ben Stucki was kind enough to give a talk this morning about Adobe Flex, which is a new development framework that sits on top of Flash 9. However, he had some technical difficulties getting his Sony Vaio to work with the projector, so I decided to step in and show off how easy it is to get my Macintosh to work with external displays. So, sure enough, my Mac detected the projector just fine. But I didn't want to take the time to install the Flash 9 beta, along with the Flex designer (which is based on Eclipse) on my Mac. Instead, I demonstrated how flexible the Macintosh is, by using the Microsoft Remote Desktop client to connect to Ben's Vaio over the WiFi.

So witness Ben giving his presentation on my Mac, connected remotely to his Vaio:

Ben Stucki talking about Flex, via some unholy Windows/Macintosh alliance

Anyways, setup drama aside, Flex seems reasonably interesting. In general, I'm not a big fan of proprietary development solutions that break the model of the web (any content in any browser). But flash is reasonably portable, and it does look like it is super-easy to generate rich applications using Flex. Apparently, this is targeted towards enterprises, and I would much rather see Flex getting adopted than Microsoft's crazy (and super-evil) Avalon stuff.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp, Flex, Adobe, Macromedia, Mac Snob

Barcamp: UNIX / Linux basics

Jordan Sissel (Google) is giving a presentation about UNIX / Linux basics. Since I maybe-possibly-sortof already know UNIX, I'm really just here to help ask questions, and see one way to do an intro-to-UNIX talk.

Jordan's talk seemed to really dive right in - he quickly got to navigating around in the shell. I think I would have started with a bit more of UNIX philosophy (which I know, is probably boring), and comparing and contrasting UNIX with Windows.

The UNIX philosophy (in my mind) is:

• Clean separation of components - the Kernel is separate from the windowing system, which is separate from the web browser, which is separate from the web server. In UNIX, you can choose the components that you want to use for each function.
• Keep things simple. The basic idea is to keep commands simple, and chain them together using pipes and files.
• "Everything is a file" - in UNIX, pretty much every resource can be accessed as a file. This file-access semantic makes it possible for different commands to interoperate with each other. Think of it as the common UNIX protocol.
• Supports multiple users by design - since the beginning, UNIX has been designed to support multiple users all sharing the same system. This legacy of supporting multiple users has made UNIX quite secure.
• Clean design - The core design of UNIX has endured for over 30 years, with numerous implementations. But the fact that UNIX remains, is a testament to its elegant design.

Other than that, Jordan's talk really has a lot of useful information in it. If you find yourself needing to use UNIX, I recommend checking it out.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp, UNIX

Barcamp San Francisco: Day 2

I really wanted a picture of the Barcamp logo to start things off, but I could find one until last night, on a t-shirt:

Anyways, I camped out on Microsoft's concrete floor last night (comfy!), and I am ready to go for another day of Barcamp. I think that things wrap-up at around 4 today, at which point I'm sure that I'll be pretty tired. :)

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp

Webhosting Q&A

Erica Douglas - Simpli hosting - owner of a webhosting company (for last 5 years). Here to answer questions.

Q: Can I use Google WiFi to host my website for free?
A: Yes and no - depends on what ports Google blocks. If not, you can do it, if it is a personal site, etc. Upstream bandwidth will hurt. Some free hosting companies - i.e. addyour.net (free web hosting, pick your subdomain), pbwiki.com (free wiki), wordpress.com (free blogs).

Q: Why host at all?
A: Hosting companies have high (multi gigabit) bandwidth. Reliable power. Cooling. Controlled environment.

Q: What should be the cost for colo with low bandwidth requirements?
A: Depends on size of server (rack space) - space in colo environment costs money. Office space in San Jose costs $1.26 sq/ft. Market post tower (MAE West) - $22 sq/ft. Recommend 1U or 2U case. Can convert typical desktop to this case for one-time fee of $200. Will save a lot of money to convert vs. keeping desktop space.

1U = $35/mo
2U = $60 - 70/mo
desktop = $110/mo

Simpli prices are are 1U + 100Gb for $79/mo.

Q: What does 100Gb of transfer mean per month?
A: Two ways to measure bandwidth - in terms of data/mo, or bandwidth (1Mbit - 95th percentile). Server is connected 100Mbit out to Internet, can burst up to that. For 95th percentile, they measure bandwidth every 5 minutes, chop of the 5% highest usage points, then bill on that. All hosting providers are billed 95th percentile style for the bandwidth that they buy. For gigabytes transferred, on the other hand, the ISP just calculates data transferred per month. ISPs, as a rule of thumb, is that 200GB/mo is 1Mbit of 95th percentile billing.

Q: What if I am pushing a lot of data to my colo server?
A: Read contract carefully, there could be hidden fees. Some will only charge for downstream (upstream gives them peering leverage), others will charge.

VPS - Virtual Private Server. This is a hosting offering that is taking advantage of virtualization, anything from a FreeBSD jail to a Solaris zone, up to Xen or VMWare. This is still fairly expensive, because you need to back each image with real RAM. So, if you give each VM 512Mb of RAM, then hosting 24 customers requires a box with 12Gb of memory (i.e. not cheap).

Q: Is there an objective site that reviews webhosting company?
A: Not really. News.com has reviews (but they take money). Webhostingtalk.com, but it is a form, and not super-awesome. Looks like there is an opening here for somebody to start something. Possibly a wiki?

If you are looking for a cheap jail, try: linode.com, or jvds.com.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp, Webhosting

From "The Wall of Independence"

They have something that they call "The Wall of Independence" here at Barcamp. The idea is that people randomly and independently write things on some large sheets of white paper tacked to the wall near the entrance. So far, there isn't a whole lot there, but this one caught my eye:

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp

Lunch

This Barcamp has been a pretty sweet deal so far. They had a pretty nice spread for lunch, supplied by WilmerHale:

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp

Anti Microsoft book at Microsoft?

The Barcamp folks have some free books for volunteers, and I spotted one that I had never heard of before:

"Just no to Microsoft"

I'm not sure who donated this one, but I thought it was cute.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp

Microformats & Music

I went to the Microformats and Music talk, and took some notes, which are going to evolve in the Wiki. What was interesting to me is that it seems like the hCalendar microformat is getting fairly pervasive, with services like upcoming.org and eventful.com collecting event information and distributing it this way. Thus, the focus of this session was more on how can we get bands and representation and venues using hCalendar, so that their show information can start zipping around the Internet automatically, notifiying me of all of the cool bands that are coming to my town.

This session was pretty small, and also pretty cool. I learned about a bunch of new websites (including pingerati.net), and learned a bit more about microformats - which I have been interested in, but haven't had time to read about.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp, Microformats

Taking a break

When I signed in to Barcamp this morning, I decided to earn some karma points (since I haven't actually been helping with the planning or financing or anything) and sign up to volunteer. So, now I'm manning the greeting table from 1 - 2 pm. Of course, my metal-clad laptop can't get a wireless signal out in Microsoft's lobby, so this is giving me a break from the web to summarize my experience so far.

I guess it is a little bit what I expected, in that the discussions are really hard to blog about. I think I was expecting to be really "blown away" buy a bunch of smart people talking about really smart things. And granted, I haven't been here too long (yet), but so far it has been just a bunch of nice, smart people talking about things. Which is cool.

In the opening intro, the thing that really struck me was when Tantek said "you get out Barcamp of what you put into it". So, as long as I stay social and engaged, I am sure that I'm going to get something great out of this experience.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp

Flex and Ajax

I derailed the Flex and Ajax discussion (organized by Andre from EBA Labs) by moving it into one of my rich web application pet peeves, accessibility. What I learned is that there are some screen readers (Jaws for Windows, apparently), that actually understand enough about Flash and HTML DOM that they can actually navigate into flash and Ajax applications, and read out the contents for the visually impaired.

So, that's good, but I still feel that great strides were made in terms of accessibility with HTML, but a lot of the newer technologies for making the web richer (plugins, Java applets at first, now flash and Ajax) are taking us backwards.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp, Flex, Ajax

At Barcamp today

So, I'm going to be at Barcamp today and tomorrow. I'm just getting oriented - I hope to post more as I do more.

For now, here are some links:

• Flickr pool
• Barcamp @ Mobido
• Technorati for Barcamp tag

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Barcamp

How the dominance of the iPod is changing cars in America

When I was in Pittsburgh last month, I rented a car. I probably owe my blog some stories about how crazy it is driving in Pittsburgh, but I'm going to tell a different tale today. I ended up getting a 2-door Chevy Monte Carlo, and I was surprised to see that the radio had an auxiliary input jack, suitable for playing any sort of audio device through the stereo.

I had some free time my second day there, so I navigated myself out to a K-Mart, which didn't have the proper cable to connect my iPod to the car stereo. So, then I went to Target, and found what I needed (anybody have any questions as to why K-Mart is going out of business?). As a result, I could now listen to my iPod in the rental car:

The picture of me listening to Tool's "Rosetta Stoned" didn't turn out, unfortunately...

This was certainly a nice perk, especially in a rental car. I didn't bother bringing any CDs with me, nor I am willing to burn some CDs just for a couple of days of driving around.

What is really amazing though, is that I'm finding this feature on almost all of the cars that I am looking at in my extensive car search. Portable audio devices have been around for a long time, but it wasn't until the iPod that auto makers started catering to them. Pretty amazing.

-Andy.

An update on my car purchasing saga

So, my new car search has become more complicated now that my environmental concerns have risen on the priority chain. Initially, I was looking more along the lines of getting a boost in terms of performance and drivability (i.e. "fun" factor) over my Saturn. But now I'm trying to throw fuel economy and emissions into the mix, as well.

This of course has lead me to take a much stronger look at hybrid cars than I had initially planned. There still aren't too many hybrid cars on the market, and if you throw away the 2-seaters, performance hybrids, one insanely expensive Lexus and all the SUVs, you are left with three cars (not a very wide selection):

1. the Honda Civic Hybrid,
2. the Toyota Prius,
3. and the new comer (that not too many people know about), the Toyota Camry Hybrid.

On Sunday, I managed to test drive a Civic Hybrid. The Honda dealer that I went to had 3 on the lot, so I was able to take one for a spin. Aside from some funky interior and exterior styling, it appears to be a fine car. I took it onto the highway, and with my foot mashed down to the floor on the accelerator, I was able to achieve enough acceleration that I didn't feel unsafe merging into traffic. The car was pretty quiet, up until I stepped on the gas, forcing the gas engine to work (which it really didn't like to do). I would say that the acceleration is close to my 124hp Saturn - it certainly isn't any better, but it didn't feel too much worse.

But all in all, I am really feeling the lack of "gotta have it" factor with the Civic Hybrid. I just don't want this car. So, I was looking forward to getting over to Toyota, to check out their two hybrid cars. Pitting the Prius and Camry would hopefully allow me to balance acceleration, interior dimensions, and fuel economy. In fact, I was really looking forward to driving the Camry, because it seems like it might be the closed of all of the hybrids to being a car that I would like to own.

Unfortunately, the helpful Toyota salesman (who pounced on me just about as soon as I parked my Saturn), informed me that the wait time for a Prius is at least 5 months. The Camry hybrid is apparently a little better - it only takes 2 months to get one of those. Even worse, you can't even test drive either car! Apparently, as soon as the Toyota deal gets a shipment of either the Prius or the Camry, they are immediately sold. The salesman took down my name and phone number, and offered to call me the next time they get a shipment. Apparently, there is a window of a few hours, where test drives can occur, before the new owner takes delivery of the car.

Sheesh.

I mean, I'm okay waiting 5 months for something, if I know that I really want it. But, I am not going to even think about buying a car without at least test driving it first. It seems like there is some "Irrational Exuberance" around hybrid cars in general, and the Prius specifically. I am really turned off by the idea of having to fight my way through the herd just to obtain one of these vehicles.

So, since I couldn't test drive anything at Toyota, I went back to my previous plan, and checked out Volvo. To my surprise, I found that the base model of the Volvo S40 (they call it the 2.4i) is actually rated as a PZEV (Partial Zero Emission Vehicle) car in California. That means that the emissions produced by the S40 are equivalent (or possibly even better) than what comes out of a Prius. This is really fantastic, because the S40 has insane amounts of "gotta have it" factor. The style of this car is incredible -- the interior minimalistic without compromising functionality. The exterior also looks great, and during the short test drive that I had, the car felt great on the road.

Plus, it has safety features up the wazoo, and Volvo seems to extend its care for the environment beyond what comes out of the tailpipe.

Unfortunately, there are two problems with the S40 2.4i (of course). The first is that the fuel economy stinks - it is rated at 22 MPG city and 30 MPG highway. At first, I thought that this was equivalent to my Saturn, but I did some digging, and it turns out my Saturn is actually rated at 24 MPG city and 34 MPG highway. This would explain why my napkin math tells me that I'm getting pretty close to 30 MPG with the Saturn. So, if I went with the Volvo, I would be making cleaner emissions per gallon of gas, but I would be consuming more gas than I am now (and far more than if I were to buy a Prius). :(

The second problem is that you cannot get the DVD navigation option on the 2.4i, only on the next model up, the T5 (which has a turbo, amongst other things). And of course, the T5, while it has slightly better fuel economy (up to 31 MPG city), isn't PZEV. :(

So, I'm pretty much back to square one, with no idea what I'm going to do. At this point, my options are:

1. To fight my way into a hybrid car that is probably pretty far from the "car of my dreams", or
2. To go with a conventional PZEV car, that has better emissions but worse fuel economy that what I have now, and doesn't quite have all of the features and power that I want, or
3. To screw the environment, and get exactly what I want (which at this point, is probably either a Volvo S40 T5, BMW 325i, or Acura TSX).

None of those choices are terribly appealing, unfortunately. And thus, I am stuck trying to figure out what the right thing is to do.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: Volvo S40, Toyota, Prius, Hybrid

Pictures

After a bit of a drought, I have gotten back to posting some pictures online. Here is one of little Kaylee (Chris and Tanya's new puppy) that I took last weekend:

Kaylee is one hard puppy to photograph!

In reverse chronological order, here are the recent galleries that I have posted:

• Cavalier Play Day (Partie Deux)
• Mike and Tanya's Birthday 6/6/06
• Mike and Sheila's Wedding Reception
• Akua's Graduation

Not everything is annotated yet, but that is on the seemingly-infinite todo list (which means that what is there, is probably all that will ever be). *sigh*.

-Andy.

"An Inconvenient Truth"

Last week, I forced Kevin to go and see "Cars". And for the entire week afterwards, I proclaimed "Cars" to be "the best movie that you'll see all year".

Well, tonight I saw "An Inconvenient Truth", and I think that now I'm going to need to amend the above statement"

"Cars is the most entertaining movie that you will see all year."

Because now, I think I can say that "An Inconvenient Truth" is the most important movie that you will see all year, and it is in fact so important, that I think it is the best movie of 2006.

It is hard for me to form into words how good this movie is. Al Gore simply lays out the fact about what has been happening to the planet for the last several decades, and shows the disaster that is waiting to happen in the coming decades. It is such an amazing presentation, that I seriously don't know how a rational human being can go and see this film and not want to take global warming seriously.

Unfortunately, America doesn't seem to be too hot on science, so the pessimistic Andy thinks that we'll find a way.

But I sure hope not, and I'm already trying to figure out what habits of mine I can change in order to help improve the living conditions on the planet.

Bottom line: I can't stress enough how important it is for every American to see this movie. While it is not without some minor flaws, the subject matter is so important, and so clearly presented, that I think it can have a real effect on the course of America's future.

-Andy.

Technorati Tags: An Inconvenient Truth, Global Warming, Al Gore, Cars

What's been goin' on

So, I haven't blogged in awhile. The primary reason for my self-imposed silence is that I got sick (again) right after memorial day weekend. I did a lot of running around, and not as much sleeping, as I probably should have that weekend. And the weekend before, I flew out to Pittsburgh, PA, and also didn't get a lot of sleep. Well, all of that caught up to me in the first week of June. At first, I thought I had a cold. But by the end of the week, I knew that I had bronchitis (again), so it was off to the Kaiser for another round of anti-biotics.

I have paid dearly for getting sick again, however, because the bronchitis has been much harder to shake the second time around. My second course of anti-biotics has been long finished, and while I am feeling better, I still have a pretty nasty cough that crops up from time-to-time.

So, as a result, I have been trying to take it easy. Just keeping up with work, having some hang-out time, but mostly hang around home time. Which has been good, because it has helped me get caught up on my video games. I played through Resident Evil 4 - starting with the first time that I got bronchitis, and finishing with the second round of bronchitis.

I'll be flying to Chicago for the first time this year, for the July 4th holiday. I hope to be all de-sickified by then. And I also hope, that taking another plane trip doesn't re-ensicken me again.

-Andy.

Hiking on Sheila's birthday

A lot has happened over the course of the last two weeks that I need to blog about. Which makes it really unfortunate that I have been wasting all of my free time trying to get my server to work, instead of writing all of this stuff down. well, I've been doing that, and playing Resident Evil 4...

Anyways, I have a lot of pictures to put online, but I really liked how this one turned out, so I thought I would post it now:

L-R: Sheila, Seth, Allison (Mike's sister), Mike, Tamsen, me, Elizabeth, and Rushabh

Monday was Sheila's birthday, so Rushabh and I drove up to Berkeley for lunch, hiking, and other general hanging out.

I don't have anything else to write about this, I guess -- I just thought that it looked cool.

-Andy.